A Little Bit Of Promo by Free Range Oyster and Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

A Little Bit Of Promo by Free Range Oyster

Alma Boykin

Golden Summer

Colplatschki Chronicles Book 10

If the spring is blighted, what does summer bring? Pjtor Adamson Svendborg, now undisputed ruler of NovRodi, will remake his land, Godown willing. But dragging his land out of the Harriers’ shadow is not easy, not when heresy and ambition combine to tear the church from within and Frankonian ambitions threaten from without.

Pjtor came young to mastery, perhaps too young, warped by his sister’s treachery. Can he learn to wait and watch, or will impatience tear down what Pjtor labored so hard to build?

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Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

He sat down at the cafe table across from the formidable looking woman.
“I need some advice Duchess,” he was silenced with a piercing stare.
“Girl trouble right?” The disdain dripped off her tongue. “What you need is a proper woman, not some foolish piece of fluff.”

Of course. The last dragon on our Earth was slain in the Levant by St. George during the seventh century, and his hoard was carted off to the Vatican. That’s the real origin of the Vatican banking scandal. They’re scared that families of those whom the dragon stole from might learn and try to reclaim the wealth. 😛

Bah, these supposed dragon sightings are just an attempt to distract from the real story the news media refuses to cover – the aliens from Alpha Centauri colluding with the Libertarians in the 2016 elections!

The gangsters followed the two young women into the alley and paused in anticipation as the pair turned to face them. Their confidence became unease when they noted the crimson sclera and elongated canines of their intended victims, and terror as the duo advanced.

Mason had a problem with girls. Well, not a personal problem really. It’s more like they had a problem with him. It seems that explosions, fires, and emergency room visits weren’t good ideas for first dates. He had given up for the moment. His soul mate would either patch him up, or hold his beer and watch.

Queen Aurore smiled mildly. “When, perhaps, you have girls of your own, good knight, you will know what a charge we put into your hands. All the more in that you will remember this journey as I remember my own to these lands. But for now, we will trust in your honor.”
I bowed again.

The girls frolicked along the beach, mostly below where the tide had packed down the sand, and gathered the shells in their brilliant yellows and oranges. Astra walked along more slowly, eying the driftwood, looking to see if there was weathered glass. A bonfire of driftwood would suit the village, it always made things amusing, and inspired tales.

Victorine would have enjoyed this more, thought Rose gloomily. Of all the girls at Miss Garden’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, she was, if not the last one one would expect to have adventures, certainly far from the first.
Or perhaps not. She would pester soldiers to let her go up in the balloons, even with their strict rotation.

Surprising though this may be to those who know her, especially to those who were girls her age in court, I have to concede that this was not the princess’s fault. For once. She is, I know, widely suspected of having insisted on the journey, but in fact, she was ordered on it by the Lady Governess of the Royal Nursery, and though she spent the trip whining of it, this did not cause the crash.

Taylor blind-sided Mark with a sockful of sand to the back of his head, kicked Benny in the crotch while jabbing Jules’ throat with the edge of one hand. The remaining gang members warily circling around, Taylor smiled, displayed outspread hands and said, “You can’t hit me I’m a girl.”

She sat at the counter with her newspaper and pretended not to hear the two men whispering across from her.
“Did you see his daughter today?
Why does he let her wear makeup?
And those Shorts!!”
She recognized their frisky grins – memories of the girls’ soccer team had aroused them.

The sun sparkled on the endless blue of the ocean. Beautiful, Zalia thought, if only she never had to look away. The frightened talk of her fellow handmaidens and the pained groans of the one surviving sailor left with them. The broken hull of their ship lay near the shore, and she resumed searching for whatever flotsam and jetsam they could find.

Lady Phaedre, a girl herself, was bearing up under the authority that had fallen on her shoulders since the wreck, when the sailors had heard that strange, fey song carried on wind and wave and had, to a man, set course for an island that seemed to rise from the waves. The fine young captain had managed to resist longer than the rest, but even he had succumbed and steered his ship to ruin no matter the efforts of the Lady and her handmaidens to prevent them.

It was Phaedre who had rallied the other girls, calmed the hysterical crying of a couple before it could spread, and set them to the business of surviving and making what shelter they could.

Phaedre bent over the sailor as he moaned, delirious with pain and blood loss. The bones of his legs were shattered, else he would have run or crawled toward the singing with the other surviving men and thus been lost as well. Even now, dying sailor groaned in his delirium of the yearning that seized his mind.

A hushed alert from the handmaiden on lookout drew Zalia’s and Phaedre’s attention. She pointed to the shore, where what at first looked like another girl was walking along the shore, a girl whose lithe form seemed to shimmer in the sunlight. Then Zalia saw her skin was of iridescent scales. Her hair was of a greenish hue and her fingers were webbed and terminated in sharp claws, so Zalia saw when the creature picked up a golden necklace from among the lady’s things and ran the jewelry through her fingers. The psiren then seemed to hear the sailor’s moans and turned toward the covert where the girls had concealed themselves, a cruel smile curved her mouth.

Quickly, Phaedre commanded them all to be silent. She handed Zalia a piece of driftwood to use as a club, while another took up a net and the lady a dirk. The others, gently-bred girls without the heart for combat, at least kept silent. Soon the only sound was the dying man’s groans.

Phaedre seemed a queen despite her torn and dirty finery and she whispered: “This time it will be a sailor who lures a psiren, and we may gain the knowledge we need to save the men and escape.”

Zalia penetrated the cave, the garment of old shed prisen skin she wore and the seaweed in her hair allowed her to blend in the darkness.
Phosphorescent growths revealed ancient mummified corpses of men, past victims sucked dry by the pseudopods that slivered from undre the island. The psirens maintained a song that kept the sailors quiescent while the psirens toyed with them.

Zalia found the captain and shoved a psiren off him ere she could sate herself. The psiren hissed at her, but Zalia raised a fist in warning and the psiren slinked off for easier prey Zalia moved close as if to kiss him, placed her hands on either side of his face and shoved beeswax deep into his ears.

A sharp slap to the face brought the captain back to himself. He swept up one of the great swords that lay on the cavern among other discarded clothes and gear, while Zalia produced a dirk.

The psirens screamed in alarm, the sound shocking the other sailors awake. Then Lady Phaedre appeared at the cavern mouth, bow and arrows in hand.

The city was astonished when a patched-up ship they had thought lost at sea with the lady and her handmaidens arrived at port. On deck were sailors, the girls who had rescued them, and tightly bound and securely gagged, the psirens.

Peter sat on the wall, his heels kicking dejectedly against the stones.
“What’s the matter, Pete?”
“Doctor Who is gonna be a girl!”

He digested this for a moment. “I suspect she’ll be a woman, but is that really the end of the world?”
“The Doctor is supposed to be a man!”
“Geeze, Pete- I’m the old fart, what’s your excuse?”
“We’re gonna see a whole season of ‘Grrrrrrrrrrrrllllllll Power!'”
“Well, there’s bound to be a little bit. A little bit of a victory lap won’t hurt us. Most of the celebration will be in fans and the press, not on the screen.” Privately, he winced at the number of inside jokes that would be added to the stories.
“I’m not so sure,” Peter replied darkly.

“Well, you might be right. I guess the success of a woman Doctor will depend on whether she’s The Doctor who happens to be a woman at the moment, or a Woman Doctor.”

Chuck holstered his weapon and stopped. Briannah was glaring at him. Blood was running down her arm and trickling down her temple, but there was no gratitude here.
“You SHOT my BOYFRIEND!”
“He was trying to kill you, Briannah. I saw it”
“YOU shot MY boyfriend! You monster!! Get AWAY from me!”
Chuck looked at the dead shapeshifter and its bloody fangs, then again at the girl in disbelief.
“You’re bleeding, Briannah, He hurt you. Let me help”
“Go AWAY! I HATE YOU!”
“Other help, then” he murmured, and turned away.

So there is no way you can homeschool your children. I get it. Ignore the scolds who tell you that you still must. For us homeschooling full time, for much of our child raising years would mean one of us quitting his job, losing the house we had a mortgage on, stopping maintenance on our perpetually-dying car, and possibly going on government assistance.

And don’t ask me what is more important than teaching my children? There are tons of things you teach your children. What they tend to actually retain is what you model.

Going on assistance would be the opposite of what we wanted to teach them. We wanted to model being working people and the rewards of hard work.

But yeah, we also wanted them to not learn idiocy, which is what they were learning in school.

So what we did was teach them after they came home from school. Sneaky, uh?

“The gods are cruel, Jarl. A man may struggle against fate and rail against them all his life, and claw his way from the lowest thane to the most honored man to ever go a-Viking, and they will bring him low in the end.”

“Worse than that, my friend. I have all a man could want, but sons. No, I, who was the terror of many an Irish lass, the strongest hammer that smashed the coastal towns… My wife has given me this night three baby girls. Three! I shall be penuried by dowries, and worse… if they are half as lovely as my wife, I shall have to fend off every man from here to the far reaches of Christendom from the things I have myself done!”

“Here. Mead. Have some mead. And then go congratulate your wife, and be prepared for your beard and hair to turn as white as the mountains, in the winter of your life.”

Steren walked quietly down the path. Suddenly, his nostrils quivered at a faint, tantalizing scent. He faded into the shadows and bushes along the trail, moving silently, tracelessly. His ears caught the sounds of girlish laughter not far ahead. His eyes sparked as he smiled. He would feed well tonight.

Forboding, the twisted branches blocked all view through the gnarled forest. The young wood cutter considered the trail; a deer path, fit for only the fleetest of foot.
“Tis folly.”
“The Weaver girls enter the wood at will.”
“These woods like girls. Pity, you are not a girl.”
He nodded.

The young woman limped out the healer’s house, and glimpsed two young girls chasing each other down the muddy street, squeaking and giggling. She’d been like them, but it felt a lifetime ago. “Please,” she prayed, “just let them play. Don’t make them grow up too fast, like I did.”

Dakro had clearly been around the Tenasti too long. He looked back, watching the picture on the sign alternate between its two states, then shuddered.

He was starting to find those tentacled udders attractive.

2)
He slammed his card through the weapons locker access, drawing his pistol as it whooshed open. Stepping inside, he scanned the area. A flashlight beamed. He took aim, and despite the blaring alarm, heard… giggles?

“Control. We’re entering the building.”
“Roger, Sweep One. Be careful.”
“Copy Control.”
I pushed the door which swung wide, being slightly misaligned on its hinges.
I could see high heels, dresses, bras, panties strewn all over the interior.
“Control. This is Sweep One. Looks like we have a girl infestation.”